How do you setup your orchestra?

Generally speaking I use NI libraries for ensembles rather than orchestras. For that I normally depend on libraries from 8Dio/Soundpaint. The recording process for capturing orchestras and assignments (first chair second chair, etc) are so different it really requires a completely different sampling and setup and process to sound right. Plus the capture process I think reduces the load on the CPU even though it can take an eternity to load sometimes.

@laserbeak

I actually love Soundpaint Adastra. I haven't used it in a full orchestral setting yet, but it's very flexible, responsive and generally loads pretty quickly. One thing you can potentially do with Adastra on Soundpaint would be to reduce the total number of tracks by using their separate string and woodwind full section ensembles as that would allow you to have a single DAW track that has all the strings (violins, violas, cellos, bass) into one DAW track and recorded separately on different areas of your MIDI keyboard. It's certainly the lowest priced of any of the orchestral libraries.

What volume issue, Laserbeak?

Did MuseScore 4 crash when you used it?

Btw, I like your profile name, it is the name of a minicon from one of the most legendary Decepticons!

So 80% of 48GB is is 38GB, that is a LOT of samples to load into memory considering most actual raw samples may be around 5MB. Seems likely about right i'd say.

As mentioned, from most of the plugins I have used over the years and a reason I kind of steer away from kontakt based instruments now is it is not very efficient at handling large amounts of samples. Consider too that all instances may be trying to load into memory all at the same time too. Kontakt in a few instances is fine, in many instances I have found it grinds to a halt.

Well, that is the first thing i'd try and rectify for better speed. Not all "USB3" enclosures are the same, nor are all USB cables for transfer, and also depends on exactly what drive is in that too. If your question is about reducing time to load into memory, you really should be considering having a quality and fast SSD connected internally in your machine. The USB side is your bottleneck in this case.

Won't make a lick of difference, it was designed for 32bit hosts and everyone for a decade has been on 64bit, if anything you need to check that it is set OFF. Best you could attempt is to not load into memory but stream from disk which you have to open Kontakt then go to the Memory tab and enable the "Buffer Override" option and set a small value for that. What Kontakt should then do is load a small amount of the sample to memory allowing it to play the sound initially while it then starts streaming from disk. However, what will likely happen here is your instruments will either stutter or some will miss notes completely/not play because the USB side is the bottleneck.

You need to kind of accept if you want to do what is considered high demand setups, you have to have a system designed for the task. You appear to have a Windows based desktop computer, just install a NVME drive or at least a decent SATA connected drive. Just don't expect it to suddenly make things load instantly, you may shave off a minute or maybe 2.

Again, my only problem here is the initial load. Everything else runs fine (so far).

Yep, that is what we were discussing, the time to load 30+ GB of samples into memory.

If you are confident that your libraries are on the best NVME drive, your memory is fast and correctly configured and system wise everything is optimal for your needs, issue is then Kontakt and the amount of data that has to be loaded into memory.